HUMANITY IN ART Paintings By Jerry Weiss
Museum of Art - DeLand, Florida
Board of Trustees (2020-2021) Dagny Robertson, President Solomon Greene, Vice President Judith Thompson, Immediate Past President Mary Jeanne Ludwig, Treasurer John Wilton, Secretary Karen Allebach Samuel Blatt George S. Bolge Jean Burns, Museum Guild President Kelly Canova John Clifford Sal Cristofano Greg Dasher Manny De La Vega Linda Colvard Dorian Barbara Girtman Joan Lee Beth Marotte
Kieu Nguyen Moses Lisa Ogram Todd Phillips Petra Simon, Museum Guild Representative Ian Williams ADMINISTRATION Pattie Pardee, Executive Director Dorothy Dansberger, Director of Finance and Operations Darlene Shelton, Manager of Guest Services Teri Peaden, Museum Store Manager CURATORIAL Pam Coffman, Curator of Education Tariq Gibran, Curator of Art and Exhibitions MARKETING Stephanie Kelly Clark, Consultant
humanity in art Paintings By Jerry Weiss September 24 - December 26, 2021 Printing E.O. Painter Printing Co., DeLeon Springs, Florida Museum of Art – DeLand, 600 North Woodland Boulevard, DeLand, Florida, 32720 Museum of Art – DeLand Downtown, 100 North Woodland Boulevard, DeLand, Florida 32720 www.MoArtDeLand.org @MoArtDeLand On the cover: Jerry Weiss, Lorre in Patchwork Coat, 1995, Oil on board, 24 x 18 inches On the back cover: Jerry Weiss, Lorre with Champagne, 1994-5, Oil on linen, 48 x 36 inches Copyright ©2021 Museum of Art – DeLand. All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or any other method without the written consent by the Museum of Art – DeLand. Sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks to artist Jerry Weiss for working through the uncertainties of the past year to bring his exceptional work to the Museum of Art- DeLand, and to George S. Bolge for his insightful contributions to the exhibition catalogue. The following donors and businesses merit special appreciation for their support and their commitment to this year’s exhibition schedule: Jeff and Karen Allebach, Scott and Christe Ashley, Grady Ballenger and Karen Cole, Barbara Baugh, Joel and Sandra Bautista, Bruce Bigman and Carolyn Bigman, Samuel and Donna Blatt, Michael and Beverly Bleakly, George S. Bolge, Michael and Deborah Branton, J. Hyatt and Cici Brown, Tom and Jean Burns, Billy Calkins, Courtney and Kelly Canova, Greg Carlton, Gwen and Edwin Carson, Wayne Carter, Miles and Stephanie Clark, John and Linda Clifford, David and Pam Coffman, John and Vernette Conrad, Elizabeth Cooper, Taver and Joan Cornett, Sal Cristofano and Laura Gosper, Dorothy Dansberger, Greg Dasher, Manny De La Vega and Jannet Avila, Dennis and Gretchen Delman, Ralph and Lisa DeVitto, Robert and Sheila DeYoung, Robert Dorian and Linda Colvard Dorian, Susan Downer, Bobbi Doyle, Anthony Ehrlich and Pauline Copello, Rick and Carolyn Evans, Kelly Fagan and Mauricio Romero, Geof and LaVerda Felton, Jorge Fernandini and Sherrill Shoening, David Fithian and Judy Boudreau, Richard and Lilis George, Ann Gerard, Arlene Gibbs, Tariq and Carly Gibran, Morgan and Beth Gilreath, Barbara Girtman, Stephen and Jane Glover, Mark Grantham, Solomon Greene, Susan Griffis, Lorna Jean Hagstrom, Tom Hale, David and Susan Hensley, Paul and Charlene Holland, John and Karen Horn, Richard and Beth Jackson, John Jeronimo, Betty Drees Johnson, Christopher and Maureen Kemp, Darrin and Diana Latow, Joan Lee, Margaret Lee, Lee and Jacquelyn Lewis, Stanley and Claire Link, Stanley and Claire Link, Tim and Mary Jeanne Ludwig, Elizabeth Marotte, Charles and Barbara Mars, Philip and Cynthia McConnell, Deborah McShane, David Scott Meier and William Suddaby, Greg and Beth Milliken, Kieu Moses, Phillip and Lisa Nall, Lisa Ogram, Frances Porter and Valerie Vaganek, Hari and Jenneffer Pulapaka, Curt and Patti Rausch, Tommy and Dagny Robertson, Stephen and Claudia Roth, Jacqueline Salmeron and Remy Vignati, Roger Schnetzer, Patty Schwarze and Don Hastings, Michael and Nancy Shayeson, Darlene and Peter Shelton, Stuart and Lisa Sixma, Ellen Smith, Gabriel Smith, Peter and Elizabeth Sorenson, Jeanne Staloff, Mac and Kathy Steen, Clifford and Lavonne Strachman, Joe and Marty Suarez, Dixon Sutherland and Kandy Queen-Sutherland, Judith Thompson, Don Van Wagenen and Paula Heinrich, Carmen Visconti, Mara Whitridge, Ian Williams and Nancy Hutson, David and Sandra Wilson, John and Nancy Wilton, Cole Wright and Amanda Cabot, Diane Yoches and Charles Bull, Capital Group, Earl W. and Patricia B. Colvard Foundation, Duke Energy Foundation, Dorothy M. Gillespie Foundation, Lacey Family Charitable Trust, Publix Super Market Charities, Inc., Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Wells Fargo Foundation, Advent Health DeLand, Bank of America, Boulevard Tire Center, City of DeLand, County of Volusia, DeLand Breakfast Rotary Club, DeLand Fall Festival of the Arts, DeLand Rotary Club, Inc., Deltran USA, Duke Energy, E.O. Painter Printing Company, Faith Hope & Charity, Junior Service League of DeLand, Krewe of Amalee, Mainstreet Community Bank, Massey Services, Inc., Merrill Lynch, Ogram, Higbee & Associates, Museum Guild, Orlando Sentinel, Passport Luxury Guide, Robertson Advisory, Inc., The West Volusia Beacon, State of Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, Stetson University, Waste Pro USA, West Volusia Beacon, West Volusia Tourism Authority. Sincere thanks to the Board of Trustees for their dedication to the mission of the Museum, and to the staff who work continuously to present exceptional exhibitions and programs to the community. Pattie Pardee Executive Director Museum of Art – DeLand
Jerry Weiss Brooklyn Bridge from South Street Seaport, 1992 Oil on linen 24 x 30 inches 1
ARTIST’S STATEMENT When I was a high school student in south Florida, my father asked George Bolge, then the director of a different museum, to recommend a figure drawing instructor. His advice was that I study with a Miami artist named Roberto Martinez; if there are a handful of turning points in a life, this was one of them. What few reservations I may have still had about becoming an artist were settled after my first life class with Roberto. The experience was a confirmation that the study of the figure, grounded in tradition, is reinvigorated by the living model; that knowledge of anatomy supports the expression of an individual temperament; and that the work of draftsmanship is rewarding beyond description. The figure was my first priority, and it remains my touchstone. It’s the subject I teach, week in and week out, at the Art Students League of New York. It is, in representational art, the measure of all things. Study of the figure was central to my art school education; plein-air landscape painting began as a summer diversion. A portrait implies intense observation of the individual, usually in a confined space. The landscape offers a view outward that opens onto earth, sea and, above all, sky. For forty years I’ve happily divided my interest between the two. Humanity in Art is the most comprehensive review of my work to date. It chronicles youthful influences and later directions. The earliest canvas dates from 1981, when I was leaving art school. The most recent paintings were completed just prior to the coronavirus lockdown. These suggest the range of my interests: family, friends, fellow artists and models, painted in the studio or their homes, and the landscape of New York, Connecticut and Maine. A unifying theme is the imperative to paint from life. There are probably chronological clues to my development as a painter, but that doesn’t preoccupy me. What matters is to approach every painting with a renewed love of the craft, and of the visual world. My deep gratitude to George Bolge, Tariq Gibran, and the staff of the Museum of Art—Deland. This has been a challenging year and a half for everyone, and after much delay it’s perhaps inevitable to feel some relief as well as celebration. This show is dedicated to my parents, and to Lorre.
Jerry Weiss Morning After a Northeaster, 2001 Oil on linen 30 x 36 inches 2
INTRODUCTION The son of the distinguished illustrator Morris Weiss, Jerry Weiss was influenced by cartoons and illustration art before he studied classical drawing. His initial focus was the simple, straightforward and compassionate depiction of people; while still a student he became interested in plein-air painting as well. Weiss teaches figure drawing and painting year-round at the Art Students League of New York, as well as intensive workshops around the country. He has had numerous one-man exhibitions in museums and galleries, and his paintings are represented in public, private and corporate collections.
HUMANITY IN ART: Paintings By Jerr y Weiss This retrospective of the work of Jerry Weiss showcases both his technical and creative acumen as manifested in both his academic portraiture and his plein-air landscapes. Although he has earned widespread recognition for his landscapes, I would like to examine more closely the “humanity” of his straightforward and compassionate depiction of mankind in his figural paintings. If man was depicted at all by modernists, it was largely when he was in the depths of despair or felt alienated (Munch); redeemed through suffering and faith (Rouault); anxious and disturbed (Kokoschka); tormented and angry (Beckmann); courageous or vulnerable (Kollwitz); formally fragmented or distorted (Picasso); turned into decoration (Matisse); metaphysically distracted (Giacometti); stylized and monumentalized (Moore); freed to serve an artist’s very private and idiosyncratic vision (Dali); dehumanized (Warhol); and so on. Throughout this century, regardless of what he might have been in actual life, individual man and his realities were little more than a device, a projection, a mask, a symbol, or a shape for whatever theoretical, expressive or formal purposes the modernist artist had in mind. Humble, simple individual man seemed terribly unimportant next to the formal dynamics and ideals of 20th century modernism. Moreover, man was no better served by non-modernist art, which did little more for the “ordinary” man than academically present him in the artificial guise of a Rembrandt, Monet, or Sargent painting, dress him up to serve some political or moralistic purpose; or paint his body and face, but seldom his humanity. For every Robert Henri, George Luks, Andrew Wyeth, or Alice Neel who has tried to portray man pretty much as he was, there have been thousands who saw man merely as a convenient peg upon which to show off technical skills, score a political point, or call out melodramatically for sympathy. Now I know that “art” and the “depiction of man” are not necessarily the same thing, even so, I can’t help wondering why recent art has so consistently failed to look at men and women as real people – especially since we take so much pride in calling this “the century of the common man.” We are capable of “freezing” human action, and then recording it so perfectly in plastic or plaster that anyone coming across such a figure in a museum has a powerful urge to touch it to see if it is only a thing or a living person. It is impressive, but it tells us nothing about ourselves – except that there are people willing to devote their lives to making precise “human” dummies and then call them art. We have generally not concerned ourselves in art with human character, or with human emotion. As a result we have produced startingly “realistic” and “true to life” works (Chuck Close and Duane Hanson) of human beings whose images, while drawn from life, are actually oriented more toward sterility and, ultimately, toward death. There are few things more difficult in art than to sit a man or a woman in a chair and to paint him or her simply and directly as a real human being. Too many factors can get in the way; a primary concern for paint quality; for clever 3
composition or lovely design; for brilliance of draftsmanship or subtlety of color; or for “depth” of psychological interpretation. These and dozens of other things can get in the way, and the resulting picture, while possibly well painted, will probably be no more a study of a real human being than a blueprint is a true picture of a house. How often, as we go through museums and galleries, do we see a painting that is so “specifically” human in character and spirit that we feel almost in the presence of an actual man or woman? Not often, and that includes old masters as well as recent art. During my tenure as a Museum Director, I have come across paintings by a contemporary American that have precisely that quality of simple and direct humanity. They are by Jerry Weiss, the artist presented in this exhibition. I first became aware of Jerry Weiss’s talent when he was a high school student studying under Roberto Martinez, a well known artist and teacher in South Florida. Since then I have followed his career with interest, while he studied at the Art Student League and gained national recognition as a successful artist and teacher in his own right. I admired the way Weiss stuck to his guns and refused to follow “painterly” fashion, and the way he developed as a creator of images. Last year while reviewing the current work of artists that I have known in the search for potential exhibits, I came across some recent portraits and figural studies Weiss had painted during the past year. I became very interested and asked him to send me more – and have, with almost every new one I’ve seen, become more and more of a fan. Jerry Weiss is one artist who does have that rare ability to pose a man or a woman and to paint him or her simply and directly as a human being. And he does so without worrying merely about “good” composition or “correct” drawing, for what he hasn’t learned by now about such matters has nothing to do with his art anyway! And so he concentrates his attention upon the model’s character and individuality, upon his or her humanity, and creates, as a result, not a mask or a symbol, or a rendering of surface reality, but a painting of a very real person. George S. Bolge Director Emeriti: Boca Raton Museum of Art and The Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Jerry Weiss Expectation; Wendy and Adrien, circa 2009 Oil on linen 36 x 48 inches 4
Plates
Jerry Weiss Mick O’Dea, 2000 Oil on linen 40 x 30 inches 5
Jerry Weiss Kirstan, circa 1992 Oil on linen 50 x 40 inches 6
CATALOGUE *Illustrated in the catalogue Adrien in an Adirondack, 1997, Oil on linen, 44 x 54 in.
Margot, circa 2001, Oil on linen, 36 x 48 in.
Alexandra, circa 2000, Oil on linen, 32 x 42 in.
Marshall Point, circa 2005, Oil on linen, 28 x 34 in.
August Sky, 2019, Oil on linen, 24 x 36 in.
May Fog, Martinsville, 2016, Oil on linen, 24 x 36 in.
Big Sky, Deep River, circa 2002, Oil on linen, 30 x 40 in.
*Mick O’Dea, 2000, Oil on linen, 40 x 30 in.
Bridge at East Haddam, 1998, Oil on linen, 34 x 36 in.
*Morning After a Northeaster, 2001, Oil on linen, 30 x 36 in.
*Brooklyn Bridge from South Street Seaport, 1992, Oil on linen, 24 x 30 in.
Nabila, 1990, Oil on linen, 28 x 32 in.
Chenoa, 1995, Oil on linen, 48 x 36 in. Claudia, circa 2002, Oil on linen, 46 x 42 in. Composition with Nude, circa 2002, Oil on linen, 36 x 48 in. Denise Upright, circa 1997, Oil on linen, 56 x 22 in. *Expectation; Wendy and Adrien, circa 2009, Oil on linen, 36 x 48 in. Faith, 2015 – 2017, Oil on linen, 48 x 24 in. Faraway Girl, 2017, Oil on linen, 48 x 36 in. Girl in Black Hat, 2018, Oil on linen, 36 x 30 in. Grafton Thaw, circa 2003, Oil on linen, 20 x 34 in. Heather, 1989, Oil on linen, 24 x 18 in. High Tide, Mosquito Head, 2010, Oil on linen, 30 x 48 in.
Noelle, circa 1991, Oil on linen, 16 x 12 in. Patricia, 1991, Oil on linen, 34 x 46 in. Portrait of David Pena, circa 1990, Oil on linen, 30 x 25 in. Railroad Bridge, Clouds, 2019, Oil on linen, 30 x 36 in. Raspberry Island, circa 2005, Oil on linen, 30 x 36 in. Reclining Woman in Black, 1989, Oil on linen, 30 x 48 in. Riding Path, 2019, Oil on linen, 24 x 36 in. Schoodic Point, circa 2004, Oil on linen, 22 x 40 in. Self-Portrait, 1991, Oil on linen, 32 x 32 in. Self-Portrait in Winter, circa 2007, Oil on linen, 32 x 32 in. *Self-Portrait, 2019, Oil on linen, 36 x 30 in. Sky Over Tiffany Farm, 2017, Oil on linen, 30 x 40 in.
Jennifer, 2000, Oil on linen, 42 x 46 in.
*Standing Nude from Behind, circa 2004, Pastel on brown paper, 65 1/2 x 28 1/2 in.
John Williams, circa 1999, Oil on linen, 30 x 24 in.
Sterling City Path, 2017, Oil on linen, 30 x 36 in.
Katharine and Samantha, 2010, Oil on linen, 40 x 56 in.
Sterling City Pond, circa 2003, Oil on linen, 36 x 36 in.
Kathryn Scott, 1984, Oil on linen, 60 x 40 in.
Sterling City Road, 2017, Oil on linen, 24 x 36 in.
*Kirstan, circa 1992, Oil on linen, 50 x 40 in.
Susan in the Old Apartment, 1981, Oil on linen, 32 x 25 in.
*Lorre in Patchwork Coat, 1995, Oil on board, 24 x 18 in.
Susan Reading, 1986, Oil on linen, 30 x 36 in.
*Lorre with Champagne, 1994-5, Oil on linen, 48 x 36 in.
Tiffany Farm Road, 2018, Oil on linen, 30 x 36 in.
Madison Pond, circa 2010, Oil on linen, 30 x 40 in.
Whitney, 2019, Oil on linen, 40 x 30 in. 7
Jerry Weiss Standing Nude from Behind, circa 2004 Pastel on brown paper 65 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches 8
Jerry Weiss Self-Portrait, 2019 Oil on linen 36 x 30 inches